In an Affordability Crisis, Can Californians Afford One More Increased Bill?

Family smiling, while leaving the grocery store with a bag of food.

When you’re looking to protect the people you love, that’s where I come in. For more than 20 years, I’ve helped families find affordable coverage that’s there through every stage of life — and through loss. I’ve secured life insurance for my clients for as little as $17 a month. This is financial protection that allows me to deliver a check on their worst days when others deliver a bill.

Every single day, insurers pay $63.3 million in benefits to California families — money that helps families keep the house, keep a small business running, or send a child to college after losing the person who paid the bills.

I don’t have to tell Californians how expensive life in the state has gotten. Housing, groceries, utilities, gas, all costs more here than almost anywhere else. Life insurance is one of the few things that’s still affordable. But a new proposal in the Legislature, Assembly Bill 1798, could change that — and California’s middle-class families could feel it the most.

In the name of protecting your privacy, this bill would keep my insurers from reviewing genetic testing information that was requested by a personal physician and already in the medical file. This information helps me build an accurate, affordable policy that actually fits you and your risk. The problem is, my clients’ privacy is already protected, and the system already works. California has had some of the strongest rules in the country for handling this information since the early 1990s. And coverage hasn’t shrunk in that time — just the opposite; it’s grown to more than 10 million policies. In other words, your privacy and affordable coverage already go hand in hand.

That affordability isn’t luck. It comes down to something simple: the better we understand your situation, the more fairly we can price your coverage. When we can see the full picture, we can keep your premium in line with your actual risk — and keep coverage within reach. Without that clarity, coverage gets more expensive and harder to justify.

That’s exactly what AB 1798 would do. It would stop insurers from asking about or using genetic test results at all. It would throw out the rules we have followed for more than 30 years — rules that allow this information to be used only when your own doctor orders the test, in compliance with anti-discrimination laws, and under the watch of the California Department of Insurance.

I understand what the bill is trying to do. But here’s the catch: the people it’s meant to help are the ones who’d get hurt. When some applicants can conceal information that points to higher future risk, we can’t price policies accurately anymore. Healthier customers start to leave, the group of people paying in gets smaller, and prices climb for everyone who stays.

If you’re a healthy, middle-class family, this is where it hits home. When we are forced to price for risks we can’t measure, you end up paying more than your own situation calls for. And because families like yours are already stretched thin, you’re the most likely to buy less coverage or walk away from it altogether. It wouldn’t even help people already managing a health condition, since California law already lets us account for those fairly. The real effect of AB 1798 wouldn’t be to protect the sick. It would be to raise costs for the healthy and leave fewer good options for the rest of us.

Our leaders in Sacramento are right to focus on making life here more affordable. Life insurance is one of the few essentials that already is. Before they change the rules that keep it that way, it’s worth asking a simple question that affects you directly: would AB 1798 really protect you, or would it just make one more thing you need harder to afford?